“No!”

“It’s okay, Captain, the oxygenated emulsion is breathable. Try to relax. We won’t cover you completely for several minutes yet.”
Captain Mike Jensen nodded and drew a steadying breath as the technician turned away. Closing his eyes, he forced himself calm and shoved away his lingering concerns about what he might have forgotten. One thousand years in transit was a long time to realize even one waking from now that you forgot to feed the cat or something!
“Its cold,” Mike said to the unseen technician. Above him the dim lights of the ship’s personnel cargo hold reminded Mike of a great cavernous tomb. Last in and first waking, he imagined the cavernous hold with its layered berths that he couldn’t see and wished he could move around, but you weren’t supposed to move during the emulsion process.
“That’s modern medicine for you, Captain, everything is cold. Breathe normally.”

Since this work is just beginning for me, just the first chapter is done, is there anything you and I could exchange to give each other feedback on? I'd like to get some more of your comments on "Wakings"

That's the thing about the 13 lines. If I need to read the whole page to understand the opening, odds are I'm not going to. I'm going to read the first few paragraphs, decide it's confusing, and put it down, because I don't trust the author to write clearly.

Especially because your second line has jargon, oxygenated emulsion, which I have to slow down to think about it means that your story is off to a slow start.

I had to read "even one waking from now" a couple of times to figure out what you meant. The first couple of times I thought you meant "one" as in "a person" or "you," like "One often finds oneself..." So I thought it meant "even when a person wakes from the present," instead of what I think you meant which is, "even if only slept went to sleep once, it was still a thousand years."

Which also leads me to wonder why he even has a cat.

quote:

---

he imagined the cavernous hold with its layered berths that he couldn’t see and wished he could move around,

---

I have a belief problem with the suspended animation system that is described here. It seems like an enourmous waste of resources to fill a cavernous tomb with this emulsion instead of filling individual compartments. Also, if one wasn't supposed to move around during the emulsion process, why is the tech doing it?

Oh. As I write this, I think that you probably meant that the individual berths were filled, but since I didn't read it that way, I'll leave my reaction in.

I have read dozens of books that crinkled my brow in utter confusion from the start, only to have an "AHA!" by the end of the page. As a matter of fact, I found the opening of Ender's Game awful. I was like...HUH?...about a dozen times until I got halfway through the first chapter. But, because I was intrigued by the blurb on the back of the book, I stuck it out and thoroughly enjoyed the entire book. I just had to work my way past half the chapter before that and I had never even heard of Orson Scott Card at the time.

I think, and this is ONLY based on my own self, that most people make a committment to a book when they pick it up. I don't buy books based on the first 13 lines, I read the blurb and make a decision based on that. If it intrigues me, I'll muddle through the first chapter no matter HOW confusing it is. The only book I ever stopped reading in utter disgust was the third book of Robert Jordan's the wheel of time series. Utter pompous crap that. I call him the Tom Clancy of clothing description. Honestly, the man could go on for five paragraphs about the lace cuff on the sleeve of a jacket and the story meandered so, I wasn't willing to put up with anymore and I STILL read 2/3 of the third book before I tossed it into the trash.

I think the first 13 lines is an extremely bad way for anyone to define whether or not they will, or will not, enjoy an entire book. If those few lines were the doom of every novel on the shelf, Barnes & Noble would be two guys we never heard of, not a billion dollar corporation.

The line: "One thousand years in transit was a long time to realize even one waking from now that you forgot to feed the cat or something!"

Was sarcasm and the referrence to "one waking" was alluding to later understandings that come at the END of the PAGE about how every fifty years of the journey the colonists go through a series of "Wake Cycles"....its maddening this 13 lines rule. I think we should forget the 13 lines altogether and post two page synopsis, or simply blurbs rather than the actual first 13 lines. I have critted five very good stories on another website that had me confused as hell in the first 13 lines only to feel ambarrassed by my own comments when I got to lines 16 or 17. Forget the 13 lines! We should write blurbs, nothing more.

quote:

---

One thousand years in transit was a long time to realize even one waking from now that you forgot to feed the cat or something!

---

Ah, now you explain, it becomes clear. But you can get the effect you want with a little punctuation:

"One thousand years in transit was a long time to realize - even one Waking from now - that you forgot to feed that cat or something!"

That way the reader can clear see that "Waking" is a particular concept, and that the one is referring to the number of wakings, rather being an impersonal pronoun.

I agree with you to a an extent about novels needing more than the first 13 lines, but there are two issues to consider. One is the limiting of extracts to prevent the loss of publishing rights, and the other is the fact that the "13 lines" are intended to represent what an editor will see before turning over to the second page of a manuscript. Editors receive far more submissions than they can hope to read, so most go by the wayside pretty quickly. The job of your first 13 is to make the editor read more, not the casual reader.

The 13-line limit is a fundamental condition of this site. If you don't like it, that's fine - perhaps this isn't the best place for you. There are a lot of other critting sites that have different conditions. But you are unlikely to get that rule changed.

Here are some of the reasons behind the 13-line rule:

1. It protects your publication rights.

2. 13 lines is about the first page of your manuscript, formatted properly. Many editors do not read past the first page if it contains obvious problems. There's no point; problems in the beginning are, in my experience, perpetuated in the rest of the manuscript.

3. The purpose of the first 13 lines is to convince the reader to read more. For me, this means I need to believe that the author is skilled enough for me to want to read on; I also need to be convinced that it's going to be the kind of story I want to read, which is more subjective.

Serious question: why do new people keep coming in here and insisting that the culture is broken and should be changed to accommodate them? I honestly don't understand that. Perhaps you should take some time to get to know this place and how it works before deciding that you need to fix it. I'm not going to come into your house and tell you to remodel your kitchen. It's just not polite.

Thirteen lines is a very short space to decide whether or not to read a whole book. Which is why we usually only use it to decide whether to read a short story or the first chapter of a book.

Message You're welcome to post a blurb in addition to the first 13.

The 13-line limit is a fundamental condition of this site. If you don't like it, that's fine - perhaps this isn't the best place for you. There are a lot of other critting sites that have different conditions. But you are unlikely to get that rule changed."

We've discussed the issue of how to respond to critiques, earlier ( http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/001622.html ) . Consensus: there are 2 valid responses to critiques. "Thank you!" and "Could you please clarify something?"

quote:

---

I don't buy books based on the first 13 lines, I read the blurb and make a decision based on that.

---

I understand that authors don't write their own book cover blurbs, the publisher does. So, in other words, you are basing your decision to buy the book entirely on how well the publisher's copywriting grunt writes, and not on the author's writing?? How sad! Think of all the great books you might have missed because the author writes better than the copywriting grunt?

This was the blurb for The Mote in God's Eye, in one of its paperback incarnations. Lordy. The story had no black hole. The light was green. The story did not address the question of whether it was God's eye (!), the aliens didn't have a red sun and weren't from another galaxy.